Final Exam Notes from Module 13 - 22

Module 13

Underworld

• gods live in Heaven and few mortals
• most souls go to Hades, good or bad
• Tartarus, could be considered a parallel to our Hell
• people who distinguished themselves in the eyes of the gods existed in a part of the underworld known as Elysium, an equivalent perhaps to our Heaven

Homeric View

• Homer Odyssey is earliest 8th or 7th BC
• Odysseus return from Troy
• shipwrecked
• takes years to find his way home to his wife Penelope
• instructed to go to the land of the dead by witch Circe

Land of Dead

• he meets the soul of his comrade Elepenor
• Elpenor tells Odysseus to return to bury his body
• burial is important since his soul is not at rest
• life preferable to death
• meets Achilles (semi-divine hero) and tells him he would rather be a slave on earth than rule in the underworld
• Tantalus tantalized by water to drink and food to eat
• he is punished for stealing food, telling humans what the gods discussed, or cooking his son Pelops to see if the gods realized
• Sisphyus must push a boulder up a hill, only to have it fall (punished for sins against gods)
• Sisphyus told Zeus he carried off his daughter Aegina and Zeus sent Thanatos (Death)
• Sisphyus trapped Death in chains so no humans died, but Area freed death and took him revenge
• punishment in Homeric view is acting in a way against the gods, not failing one’s interaction

Plato

• fourth-century Greek Philosopher Plato
• world beyond what we see and know in life which itself is an illusory reality
• emphasis on the soul (psyche)
• soul of human separates at death and is returned to true existence after death
• mortal man Er returns to life to recound his experience of what happens to souls after death in Myth of Er
• different outcomes for the souls of men, depending on how they acted in life
• Plato, virtue of life is significant for the one’s lot in afterlife

Virgil

• Latin poet, book six of Aeneid
• poem written at the end of first-century BC
• Aeneas descends ot the underworld
• Aeneas son of Aphrodite and Anchises
• Aeneas goes to underworld to see his father Anchises
• must get a golden bough sacred to Persephone and bury his comrade Misenus
• aided by Sibyl prophetess of Apollo at Cumae
• those not buried are not allowed to cross into the realm of the dead, and must wait in between two world until they are buried
• Cerberus, guard dog of underworld
• Tartarus, a terrifying fortress which holds great sinners such as Tantalus and Sisyphus
• Tityus, assaults Leto and fate is now stretched across nine acres as a bird eats away his liver (which continuously regenerates to allow the punishment to continue eternally)
• Tartarus also houses those people who have sinned against fellow humans, those who hated their brothers and harmed their relatives